Reprise: the commonwealths

The question came up again yesterday from a reader — the same one that had reader Mary Simons puzzled by a few years back.

“I used to live in Pennsylvania,” Mary wrote back in 2012, “and now I live in Tennessee. Some of my ancestors are from Massachusetts and some from New York. Some of my husband’s ancestors are from Virginia, some from Kentucky and some from Georgia.”

And it’s those particular locations that raise the question: Tennessee and New York and Georgia are all states. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Virginia and Kentucky are all commonwealths.

So, Mary asked, “what’s the difference between a state and a commonwealth?”1

That’s exactly the same question that reader Carole D. had after going to the website of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Legislative Reference bureau mentioned in yesterday’s blog as a great resource for early Pennsylvania laws.2

Because this is one of those questions that really has different answers depending on the context.

In other words…

It depends.

Now, of course, The Legal Genealogist hates to ever come across as a smart-aleck.3

But the legal and factual difference between the word “state” as it describes Georgia, New York and Tennessee and the word “commonwealth” as it describes Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia is…

(Drum roll, please…)

• Seven letters. (The word “state” has only five letters; the word “commonwealth” has 12.)

• And two syllables. (Even in areas with pronounced drawls or twangs, “state” has only one syllable, and “commonwealth” has three.)

That’s it.

Really.

Oh, there are some practical consequences, to be sure. Two that I can think of off-hand:

• Criminal cases in the first group would usually be titled State v. Defendant4 and criminal cases in the second group would be titled Commonwealth v. Defendant.5

• And it’d be a lot harder to fit Commonwealth on a t-shirt.

Give me a few decades and I might be able to come up with a few more practical considerations but…

The fact is, those four jurisdictions — and only those four — chose to call themselves commonwealths when they began. All four named themselves as commonwealths in their earliest post-colonial constitutions: Virginia in June 17766; Pennsylvania in September 17767; Massachusetts in 17808; and Kentucky in 1792. Kentucky was a tad schizophrenic about it: the preamble of the 1792 Constitution references “the people of the State of Kentucky” but it refers in the body of the document to “this Commonwealth.”9

The theory is that the word was chosen by the first three as they broke away from England to emphasize that their government was for the common good — the common weal — and not for the Crown10 and that Kentucky used it simply because it was used to it when it was part of Virginia.

So why the wimpy “it depends on the context” answer above? Because there really are some American commonwealths where it does make a difference — where they are part of the United States but not states at all. The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,12 for example, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.13

Now just so you’ll feel better, we’re not the only ones with this kind of an issue. In Australia, the question that gets asked is what the difference is between a state and a territory.14 And in Canada, the question is what the difference is between a province and a territory.15

At least in those cases, there really is a difference… But we’ll leave that for another day.

See Bennett Henderson Young and William Grigsby Bullitt, History and Texts of the Three Constitutions of Kentucky (Louisville : Courier-Journal, 1890), 2: 16; digital images, Google Books (http://books.google.com : accessed 15 May 2018). ↩

10 Comments

And the people and territories of “those other Commonwealths” are treated like second class citizens by the people and the government of the US. Call Puerto Rico and the Marianas what they are literally and figuratively – colonies. There’s a BIG difference and it is highly discriminatory.

Made me laugh this morning -luckily while not in the midst of drinking my tea! You are the epitome of creative smart-aleckery!! And, yes in Canada, provinces and territories are in fact run differently. Although, how on earth can Prince Edward Island be a province with such a small population-? [I do know, but really…]

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries “commonwealth” was used as the equivalent of Republic. Remember that the government of England was called a Commonwealth when Oliver Cromwell was in charge. (However he became a dictator, and after his death England became a kingdom again Under Charles II, because, as Churchill wrote, they decided that it was better to live under a monarch with legally limited powers than a dictator with unlimited powers.) The powers in the Royal Prerogative are limited in the Common Law.

Educational and entertaining. I always figured that the only difference between a State and a Commonwealth was the terminology and, so it seems. Australia may be a bit different so maybe you will cover that in another Blog. Thanks!

You just shined a light into my dim world of knowledge. Always wondered about that commonwealth thingy, just never looked it up. Now, dropping down to the county level, could you please explain the difference between a parish and a county!

Leave it to you, Judy, to burst my snobby bubble:-) I was secretly proud to be born in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Sounds so much more classy than the State of Pennsylvania. I also was quietly proud of the fact that I have many relatives who live in the Commonwealth of Virginia and in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — sorry Commonwealth of Kentucky was news to me — got have some of my cousins move there. And of course, after twenty-six years of living in the lowly STATE of New Jersey, I had to move back to the lofty Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Thanks for your fun and informative post, even if it took me down a peg or two.

Archives

We use cookies on this website to ensure that the site will work properly on your web browser together with improving the site’s performance.
If you click "Yes, I agree," you are agreeing to our use of cookies.Yes, I agreePrivacy Policy